Things We Lost in the War
by 1shot
Summary: She loves a man whose skin is poison.  AKA: perhaps you also played through ME3 and felt something was missing? This is for you. Spoilers to the end.


THINGS WE LOST IN THE WAR

_In the light that sears away the world, a woman falls._

_She is very tired._

_There is blood on her face._

_She has a hole gashed through her, just beneath her ribs. The ribs themselves are cracked._

_She is already forgetting her name._

_('Siha,' he called her.)_

_She is terribly afraid that she has lost the fight, but the light is bright and in the breath that peels her skin away, there is nothing for her to do but plummet._

.

She loves a man whose skin is poison. She lays her cheek against his chest (knows she should not) and feels the dry scales of him as he breathes; she lifts a hand, curious, and traces curving symbols in the air, watching the pale glow of her fingers against the starscape beyond the great ship's portal.

"Hm?" he murmurs then, a rumble against her ear. The dark folds of his skin flutter like gills in his neck. She will never cease to marvel at the universe.

She says, "Blue, and green. But mostly green. Like fireflies. You're a trip, you know that?"

"The commander shouldn't be getting high," he notes, but warmly; his lips are curving with the quiet surprise that marks his every joy. His fingers are thick and impossibly light against her spine.

"Setting a bad example," she agrees. "I won't kiss you anymore."

She is already lying.

.

_Falling takes a very long time._

_She wonders if she will strike the Earth - if her body will burn on re-entry, if her ashes will drift across the land like some unnatural rain._

_(It isn't fire that tugs her.)_

.

Part of the woman - a secret, shameful, glorious part - only lives in battle.

Shrapnel slices the air next to her face; she ducks, feels the impact of a bolt against her armour-clad shoulder. Rolling to the side, she presses herself tight against a rock shelf and curls her finger - light and ready - on the trigger of her pistol. The visor across her eyes reduces the world to flashing readouts of target and distance.

"All right?" he asks, over the hissing static of the comms, but she is already moving; a shot, another and another, bodies falling before her. She smells scorched flesh. Something long rotting explodes in hot slime across her boot.

("Arashu," murmurs the distant voice, and she hears only the wonder in it. Across the cavern she sees chitin soldiers scatter - among them, a slender figure slices and rolls with all the sleek cruelty of a praying mantis.)

She tastes blood, and realizes her teeth are bared.

.

_She could fly into the wind forever; this is the easy part._

_She has a final task, she knows._

_(Once more unto the breach.)_

.

The sand shifts beneath her feet, untrustworthy, but she likes the way it sparkles all the same. Beside her, he takes a breath of dry, scorched air; startled satisfaction floods his face, and his shoulders straighten. The black depths of his eyes are unknowable, but when he turns his head, he smiles.

"We could stay here," he suggests.

The too-large sun beats down hard, and her suit can only do so much; she raises a hand, pushing sweaty hair from her eyes, and squints at the brilliant glare.

"We'd have to mind the thresher maws."

"It could be done." He is sanguine. He presses his palms together, tilting his own gaze to the sky - as though he were a plant now, green and delicate, seeking the light. She knows that he is communing, though his gods are strange to her, and unknown.

She stares out at the barren dust, and thinks about retiring.

.

_She can feel the __world stretching around her. Bits of her scatter; she is the last, she is broken shards._

_The metal/wire/power that sustains her flares to sudden, panicked life:_

_0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1_

_(She is becoming.)_

.

When soldiers come and snap the bonds across her wrists, she does not protest. The deck is silent and still as she is led away. Her footsteps echo in unison with her escort; the military march is measured.

Halfway to the air lock, a quick, sharp whisper of sleeves heralds the salute her people give her. They line the way and they do not look down. She lifts her chin. She is strong and proud.

Her poison-man does not salute. He cultivates a particular stillness, there in the shadows; he is a blade at the ready, half-unsheathed, and she is surprised when he moves at all. At the corner of her eye she sees his hand lift to his mouth.

The sound he makes is involuntary, short and rasping. She hears it between the thumps of booted feet, and something in her seizes. She would turn, but a hand is too firm at her elbow; she is ushered to a ramp.

The door closes behind her with a hiss.

.

_To dissolve is a peculiar sensation. It doesn't hurt except when it does; it bathes her bones in eternity and she cannot scream. The light takes her air and her flesh and her_

_(thoughts)_

.

She finds him at the end of worlds, amid antiseptic and plastic. The cough has settled in his chest but she is the one who cannot breathe. She is stricken by the rage of months wasted.

"Come with me," she begs him (she is the commander; she cannot really beg but she wants to).

"I will fail you," he murmurs; his hands are slow and gentle on her, his palms rough against her ribs. His touch brings distant dreams and the hint of coloured sparks. Her skin will itch, later. "I am not what I was."

"You can't," she begins, and "You could never -" but she can't explain, cannot begin to tell him that the failure is hers - that losing people is her gift. She says, instead, "Earth is _burning_," and she feels her body tremble.

He urges, "Sleep." He is fragile, she thinks. She could break his collarbone with one hand.

He says again, "Sleep," and he draws her down, pressing on the molten weight of her weariness; she sounds a protest in the back of her throat. There are a trillion lives on her shoulders.

She has already closed her eyes.

.

_(The _square root_ of 906.01 equals 30.1.)  
><em>

_She touches the universe._

.

The death that stalks him has stolen none of his grace. He comes from above; he comes from the dark, slamming into the arms of the enemy at the last possible gleaming second. Before her, two assassins dance and slice and she is helpless. Her hand is on the gun but they are too fast.

For one fierce moment, the men she watches are evenly matched; each mirrors the other's demise. Blades shimmer and forms twist; she can do nothing. She is transfixed by the perfect arc of their bodies.

(He is _magnificent_. She knows it is the last time.)

She is already firing when the sword enters him; she is in motion by the time he hits the ground. Her feet pound past the spreading stain where his blood mars the pristine tile.

She doesn't stop and he doesn't expect her to. She doesn't know which is worse.

.

_Life is a single and timeless expanse. It is remarkably simple to drift - impossibly far - and make one tiny change._

0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1

_(She is spreading herself thin.)_

_(This is what she came to do.)_

.

(Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths..)

His last prayer is for her. It won't help, she wants to tell him; she would laugh, or maybe scream, but he can't hear her anymore. So she stands alone on her ship, in a small, bare room, and she watches the sea of stars glide by outside. She leans her hip against the only table. Her hands are closed tightly around a long-abandoned coffee mug, but she does not drink. It contains only dust.

The speaker on the wall says, "Commander," and she doesn't move.

"Is it life or death?" she asks. Her gaze is set on the stars, on the endless ocean of wavering light and the impossible darkness beyond.

The pause that greets her is uncertain. "It's always life or death," replies the ship, apologetic.

The second silence is short before the woman nods, mostly to herself. She sets the old mug on the table, ignores the ache in her skull and the tell-tale twinge of her knee when she steps toward the door. "I'm coming," she says.

It's what she always says. There are no real choices.

.

_She is an eternity drifting in free-falling light. She has no skin, no bone, no heart (does she remember these things?); she has expanded. She fills the galaxy._

_(She fills time; she is one desert breath in his faltering lungs. She could stay there forever.)_

_Faces float before her. She touches tiny lives, one by one, holds them - long limbs, frantic cries, blue skin, cracking bone. Her friends, her brothers and sisters. The ones who will grieve and the ones who curse her, wailing. _Goodbye_, she thinks, and _I love you_; she twists all the cells, the smallest lights, the beats still meant to be._

_She cannot remember her name._

_('Siha,' he called her.)_

_(Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths...)_

_(Nothing is left.)_

_(She is not done.)_

_She still has_

_a_

_sea_

_to cross_

_there are_

_so_

_many_

_stars_


End file.
